


Twist Into My Heart

by Orockthro



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, During Canon, F/M, Geralt deserves love, Light Dom/sub, Minor Character Death, Multi, OT3, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-OT3, Sexual Content, The Witcher Kink Meme, Witcher style horror, death of a minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:03:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23151409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: “Has anyone told you how lovely your hair is?”He grunts a little in answer and she slaps his back, but without force. “Speak, witcher.”“Yes.” It feels like an admission. Like a secret he wasn’t meant to spill.“Ah,” Yennefer says, and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. “The bard, then.”(Or, 5 times Geralt got his hair styled by people he cares about, and 2 times they caught him trying (unsuccessfully) to braid his own hair.)
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 32
Kudos: 351
Collections: Witcher Kink Meme (Dreamwidth)





	Twist Into My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt on the kink meme: 5 times Geralt got his hair styled by people he cares about, and 1 time they caught him trying (unsuccessfully) to braid his own hair.
> 
> The world is... very chaotic and frightening right now. So let's breathe deep and read and write soft things, mkay?

1.

His mother cards her hands through his hair. It’s one of his first memories of her: the way the sun warms them both through the trees overhead, the heat of her hands against his scalp, and the smell of sweet grass in the summer air. There’s smoke in the air, too, from a fire, and the smell of cooking meats. 

It feels good. Comforting. 

Later, when summer fades into fall, she will take him in the cart and bid him to fetch water and leave him in the road and he will never see her again. 

But now, in the summer sun she’s singing something, though he no longer recalls the tune, and in this moment Geralt feels loved. 

2.

When Geralt wakes, his bones aching and vomit crusted on his chin, it is a surprise. 

“You might die,” Vesemir said, and Geralt understood that to mean, “You’ll probably die, sorry, kid.” But he wakes, and he struggles to roll onto his side, his entire body shaking and weak. 

The boy to his left is dead: blood has leaked from his eyes in such quantities that it’s pooled on the ground of the cave and left dark, disfiguring hematomas under the skin. The boy on his right is alive but shaking and quiet and staring up, unseeing. 

But Geralt is awake, and alive, and he stumbles out of the cave. Vesemir catches him under the elbow, smiles and says, “Well done,” and bades him sit on a log. Another of the witchers drags out the bodies of the other boys one by one, and leads the blind one to sit next to Geralt. The boy still hasn’t spoken. Geralt thinks his name is Issak. Eventually, Issak is led away too.

But on the log Vesemir rests a heavy, calm hand on his shoulder and pours a pitcher of water over his head and combs out his hair with his fingers. The action is different than how his mother did it. There is not love but brotherhood in the action, but Geralt still leans into the touch. 

“Your hair went white,” he says, and Geralt pays as much attention as his exhausted, starved, and rattled mind can. “That’ll help, probably. Make you look older until you fill out more.” 

“Hm,” he says. 

Vesemir pulls his hair into a rough collection at the back of his head, ties it off with a leather strip, and leads him back to the hold where the bodies of the dead boys lay face up and uncovered, Issak is now among them, his throat slit wide. 

3.

Sometimes Geralt pays not only for a bath at an inn, but also company. He routes through a particular town on one of the main roads near the Pontar and has, despite his best intentions, developed a rapport with a particular woman in a particular inn. 

Her name is Susetti and she’s got two kids, bright black hair that’s been dyed with ink to hide the silver, and wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. He pays her fees and leaves a little extra coin in her shoes for her, since he knows her fees go mostly to the man who arranges her evenings. 

He likes her. She’s good to him. Helps him bathe, doesn’t blink at the flaked blood that turns the bath water red as he washes it off, and, sometimes, she tisks at him and bats his hands away and puts her hands to his hair and, “sets it right.”

She’s a bit younger than him, although by this point no one would guess, should they assume he’s human and not what he truly is. 

She’s afraid of him, just a little, but she puts it away when she’s with him and Geralt takes what he can get. The heat of the bath and the quick, deft movements of her fingers soothe the weary, tired part of him that is still aching for something that long ago left him behind in a cart, standing in an empty road with a pail of water. 

4.

Jaskier is different. 

He doesn’t shy from Geralt, not even after he punches the man for calling him a butcher. Jaskier is in his personal space, digging through his things, pestering him with questions, and so simply and utterly  _ present _ that Geralt finds himself lured into accepting Jaskier into his life simply because Jaskier seems to think it correct.

They travel together for a few weeks here and a few weeks there, and it’s two and a half months into their strange arrangement that Geralt doesn’t even conceive of as friendship that Jaskier, proud as a peacock and standing by the river they’ve set camp next to, says, “Sit down you ridiculous creature and let me take care of  _ that _ for you.” He waves a hand at Geralt’s head where, admittedly, there is a rats nest of tangles. It had been two weeks hunting a beast and sleeping in fits and spurts, not having the chance to rest Roach properly let alone mind his  _ appearance _ . 

And then the beast was slain and Jaskier had appeared again, like he always did. 

Jaskier is, as usual, dressed in a doublet that matches his trousers. It’s gone a bit yellowed from wear and sweat but is still remarkably well kept considering Geralt’s own shirt is all but plastered to his body and will need a long session in the river with stones to be made clean again. He feels filthy, crusted, and exhausted. But he doesn’t need Jaskier or anyone else. 

“No.”

“Come now, Geralt, your hair looks like something’s been nesting in it, surely you wouldn’t mind a little help sorting it out--”

“I said no, bard.”

“Well fine then. Don’t look at me if it gets so tangled it needs to be shorn off. That’ll really help convince the masses that you’re a friend of humanity, hum? A witcher waltzing into town with half a head of hair?”

“My hair doesn’t matter.” 

“But it’s so lovely!”

This he ignores. Jaskier is clearly fishing for something, lying for some reason Geralt isn’t quite sure of. Geralt’s hair is a symbol of what he is, and he keeps it long to remind those around him that he isn’t human. That is all. 

He says as much to Jaskier. 

And then Jaskier, who has the self preservation of an infant, goes, “Oh posh,” and grabs his arm and drags him towards the river. 

Geralt could overpower him in a heartbeat. It would be easy, in fact. A quick twist of the wrist and Jaskier would be in the water; another twist and he could hold his head there and drown him. Jaskier is, at any given moment, minutes away from death at Geralt’s side, and yet here he is, pulling him towards the river as if he weren’t a mutant without emotions who could snap his neck. 

Geralt lets himself be pulled over. 

Jaskier sits him down on the edge of the river so that he can kneel behind him and set to work on his hair. The pulling and tugging required to untangle the worst of the knots is uncomfortable at first, but Geralt is accustomed to bearing discomfort with regularity. It is the pleasantness that comes after which is strange and alluring. 

Jaskier rubs a strange, sweet smelling oil into his scalp. His fingers are warm and strong from his lute playing, and he works the oil in. 

“You’ve lovely hair. I like the color, too. A man could write a song about hair like this...”

And Geralt lets his eyes fall shut and is lulled into a gentle dose by the sound of Jaskier’s voice. 

5.

Geralt falls in love with Yennefer like a man falling off a horse. It’s sudden and painful. He kisses her like a drowning man, and they make love like they might never see another day. 

She uses him, tugs on his hair, pushes him about. It’s nothing maternal at all, and Geralt loves it. He might love her, too, if he was convinced that love was something he was capable of. 

It’s surprising when she flips him over and does nothing more sinister to him than play with his hair. She’s sitting astride him, her thighs against his flanks and clothed in nothing more than a gossamer robe. 

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing you need concern yourself with,” she replies. He can’t see her face from this angle, forced face down on the bed like this, but he can imagine it. Smug, most likely. Perhaps smiling. 

“Has anyone told you how lovely your hair is?”

He grunts a little in answer, and she slaps his back, but without force. “Speak, witcher.”

“Yes.” It feels like an admission. Like a secret he wasn’t meant to spill. 

“Ah,” Yennefer says, and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. “The bard, then.” 

He tries to roll over, to press what she means out of her, but she holds him in place firmly. “No. I wasn’t finished yet,” she says into his skin, and the words vibrate through him. He lays still, shivering under her touch, and allows her to play, twisting his hair into a braid. 

+1

He has done this before, it shouldn’t be difficult. He’s trying to coax his wet locks into something at least resembling a braid. It’s nice done up that way; it stays out of his eyes and doesn’t knot so badly. There isn’t the coin for an inn and so there is no mirror to aid him, either. A swift dunking of his head in the bucket of water collected to quench Roach’s thirst and calm his own stinging wounds helped a bit, but his hands are still stinging, healing from the burst of acid that spilled forth from an exploding creature, and making the braid neat is not so easy as it seems. 

“Do you want help?” 

It’s Ciri. Her voice is small; they haven’t been traveling together long yet and she’s as sure of him as she is unsure. He pauses, his hands still against his dripping hair. 

She takes his silence as an urge to keep speaking. She reminds him of Jaskier in that way. “I used to braid my grandmother’s hair, sometimes.” 

He smiles at her. He can give her this, if nothing else. “Then you’ve done the hair of a queen. I would be honored.” 

She smiles a little, and even though it’s still hesitating, it’s good to see. They’ve spent the last two weeks flitting through forest, avoiding open roads, and heading north faster than the southern army but only just. There has been no time for frivarlies, no time for anything that might remind the lion cub of Cintra of her home or her previous life. 

Geralt can give her this.

He sits next to the small fire they’ve risked in order to cook her food and she stands at his back in the growing dim of sunset. Her fingers are narrow and slow, but they speed up as she gains confidence in her work. It isn’t cold yet, but it will be soon as they keep pushing northwards. He’ll need to find her better gloves.

“Why do you keep it long?”

Most Cintran men kept it short, he recalls. It’s tempting to say it’s the custom where he’s from, but he doesn’t recall, and he finds himself strangely unwilling to lie to this girl who is now his to keep safe. 

“To scare men,” he says. “The color is unnatural. Like my eyes.”

She is silent as she works for a moment. “The color is not that different from mine.” 

He turns, even though it ruins her work. “You,” he says with careful power, “are not unnatural.” 

There are tears in her eyes. “I killed people,” she whispers, and her voice cracks and Geralt’s soul howls. 

“Yes,” he says. “But you are not a monster.”

She cries for a little bit, and he holds her. By the time her tears have quieted it is dark and he smothers the fire for fear of attracting attention. 

In the growing pitch she sits close to him and keeps one arm touching his side and he keeps one arm wrapped around her shoulder. 

“I didn’t finish your hair.”

He presses a kiss into hers. “I will still be here in the morning.” And she cries again at that, and they sleep side to side, curled under the horse blanket. 

+2

He starts to pull at the rough tail his hair is in when Yennefer’s soft, dangerous voice slips into his ear. 

“Geralt, let us.” 

He says, “no,” but they all know it’s performative at this point. Jaskier tugs him to the bathtub, strips him summarily out of his clothes, and Geralt swings his legs over the side grumbling as he goes. 

It’s Yennefer who pours stove-warmed water over his head and sends him sputtering. There are rose petals in it, and he is positive he didn’t smell roses earlier. 

“You magicked those.”

“So astute, isn’t he, Jaskier?”

Jaskier hums out a yes, but is distracted by stripping himself out of his fine clothes instead. Geralt watches them drop to the floor in a puddle and his heart quickens as Jaskier turns to face him and climb into the tub, slowly, simply to torture him. 

“Keep him distracted will you?” Yennefer orders as she sets to work on his scalp, massaging in one of Jaskier’s oils. Jaskier, it seems, takes orders well. He pushes forward into Geralt’s lap and nips at his lower lip. Geralt, who all but melted in the heat of the bath, the warm confidence of Yennefer’s hands, is butter against Jaskier’s mouth. He kisses back, but a tug on his hair keeps him from moving. 

“I didn’t say you could move, did I?” She’s working his hair again, washing out the oil from the long strands and running her hands through it. It’s rough and sensual, and Jaskier is still sucking on his lip, and Geralt thinks he might have died, only he’s also sure that witchers don’t go to wherever this might be when they die. 

Jaskier pulls back to lick his own lips, which are flushed to match his face. “Absolutely not. In fact,” he kisses the blade of Geralt’s jaw, “I don’t believe you’ve said he can do anything at all.” 

“Quite right,” Yennefer agrees, and Geralt both rues the day they gave up their animosity and turned their mutual attention towards him, and exalts it. “Geralt, I told you we would handle this.” A sharp tug on his skull seals the words and he lets her tilt his head back and administer a kiss of her own. 

Jaskier kisses a line up down his jaw to the hollow of his neck, to the line of his collar bone and to the crest of his chest. And all the while Geralt is immobilized, held in place by his affection and Yennefer’s strong hand on his head. Her hands are working carefully and he can feel each pull of his hair as she weaves the locks together piece by piece into a braid. 

Three parts, becoming something new. 

Jaskier threads into his arms in a warm flush and, finished, Yennefer wraps her arms around both of them, a braid of their own making. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love.


End file.
